National Uniform Education Policy for Regional Languages
The Government has undertaken a collaborative, multi-stakeholder and multi-pronged consultation process for formulating the New Education Policy (NEP), which included online, grassroots and national level thematic deliberations. Out of the 33 themes, one theme under School Education ”Promotion of Languages” and one under Higher Education “Promote cultural integration through language” relates to languages. For facilitating grassroots consultations, relevant question templates were translated with the help of NCERT into 12 languages- Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
A meeting was held by the Minister of Human Resource Development on 21st March, 2015 with Education Ministers, Secretaries and other senior officials of the State Governments in which the consultation process was explained in detail and suggestions of States on the process as well as the themes were also invited. The NEP consultation process was discussed in the meeting of Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) on 19th August 2015. Views of all States and members of CABE were invited on the consultation process and the themes. The entire grassroots consultation from village, block, district to State is through the State government machineries. States have also been requested to submit their views and recommendations on the New Education Policy. Six Zonal Meetings were held by the Minister of Human Resource Development in Eastern, Central, North-Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern Zones covering all States and UTs in September-October 2015 which was attended by Education Ministers and officials of the respective States/UTs. The issue regarding regional languages was discussed during Zonal Meetings.
The Government of India has constituted a Committee for the Evolution of the New Education Policy (NEP) which will examine the outcome documents, recommendations, suggestions and views received and submit a Draft National Education Policy as well as a Framework for Action (FFA) by 31st December, 2015.
Further, the Ministry is responsible for development, promotion and propagation of all languages, including Hindi & Sanskrit. Accordingly, an Expert Committee has been constituted to examine the entire gamut of preservation, development and promotion of all scheduled and non-scheduled languages and mother tongues, and to formulate a comprehensive National Policy on Language.
This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Irani today in a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question.
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